Every Minute Counts for Tulsa Federal CU

Industry: Banking | Financial Services

When your IT team is overwhelmed with high priority projects, streamlining daily processes is the only way to find more time in the day. Thanks to GoAnywhere™, Tulsa Federal Credit Union™ is doing just that.

One of the daily tasks that Systems Administrator Jeremy Lippiatt found especially irritating was managing Tulsa Federal Credit Union's file transfers. Fortunately for him, that task was most often handled by IT Administrator David Huggins.

"Every day we'd transfer files to the Fed, like check images," Huggins said. "I also moved files for accounting, for Payment Services, and others. I was spending 5-10 minutes a day, which may not sound like much, but over time, it adds up."

Lippiatt's frustrations came if Huggins was unavailable.

"There would be times that David (Huggins) would be out of the office, and I was his back-up," Lippiatt said. "I don't know how David dealt with those transfers every day because it was driving me crazy. It would take me 20-30 minutes because I could never find what I was looking for. I knew these file transfers were a repetitive task that we should be able to automate easily. So that's when we started looking for a better way."

Challenge: Find a File Transfer Solution That Was Fast and Easy to Implement

Lippiatt, Huggins, and Director of Information Technology Andy Tripp knew that there had to be a more efficient way to automate their file transfers. After talking with colleagues at other credit unions, they scheduled demos with several managed file transfer vendors, including Linoma Software.

Lippiatt's requirements were straight forward. He needed a solution that would run on a Windows server and would help them automate their file transfers. He also wanted something the team could implement quickly and easily.

"The other software products we looked at were a lot of work to set up. First, you had to set all of this up, and then you had to set all of that up, and all I could think was, 'I just want move a file!"

The Tulsa Federal Credit Union's team soon realized that GoAnywhere was exactly what they needed.

"We had multiple projects that needed my attention," Lippiatt said, "so I didn't have a lot of time to get this software up and running, and that was a huge factor in our decision. That's why we chose GoAnywhere, because it was easy to set up and the functionality just made sense."

GoAnywhere's Flexibility with File and Directory Structure Was Important

One of Lippiatt's favorite aspects about GoAnywhere is its ability to handle almost any file or directory structure.

"We had some very specific formatting and processes that we have to follow – some specific folder or directory structures -- and I was able to parse through it all and get it to behave exactly like we needed," Lippiatt said. "We even had some non-standard files that came in with unusual parameters that GoAnywhere was able to parse with no problem. It has so many options to pull and display information like dates, that all of our scenarios were covered. What was a very difficult with custom coding suddenly became very easy with GoAnywhere."

One of Huggins' favorite features is GoAnywhere's ability to automatically pull files from specified directories.

"Before GoAnywhere, I would have to log in to three or four different directories and get two or three files from each one," Huggins said. "Now GoAnywhere checks for those files, even over the weekend, and automatically pulls them in. If there's an issue with a transfer, GoAnywhere immediately sends me an alert indicating the transfer failed with a copy of the error log. If I don't get any alerts, I know the transfers were all delivered and retrieved."

More Automation Projects Will Be Incorporated Soon

Though Tulsa Federal Credit Union has only implemented GoAnywhere on a relatively small scale so far, Lippiatt has plans for a much wider deployment.

"First, we have to undo the way we've been doing things before GoAnywhere," Lippiatt said. "But soon, I'm going to integrate other departments that are sending files, because I still see people sending files via email that should be sent through GoAnywhere. It will be great to have all of our file exchanges logged in one place."

The ease of use and the flexibility that's built into GoAnywhere have served Lippiatt's team well.

"With GoAnywhere you have a LOT of options, from basic to advanced, and it's not difficult to sort through them," he said. "We're just getting started, but I know when we're ready to take the next step, GoAnywhere has many more layers of features for us to explore."

Huggins is just relieved to be able to spend the time GoAnywhere saves him on more pressing projects.

"GoAnywhere works. We have had ZERO problems with it, which is not something you can say about very many products."

About Tulsa Federal Credit Union

Since 1943 Tulsa Federal Credit Union has been serving the financial needs of our members. Tulsa Federal Credit Union has grown to include more than 56,000 members and assets of $630 million. With 13 Tulsa area branches we are a full-service credit union offering all types of loans from new vehicles to first mortgages. We also offer several great checking account programs, money market accounts, plus certificates and IRA plans.

Our philosophy of self-help, self-support and promotion of thrift within our membership has made the credit union successful. The credit union is owned by the membership. Profits from the credit union operation are returned to the membership in the form of higher dividends, lower loan rates and reduced costs on many services that you might otherwise have to pay for at other financial institutions.